


Someday Soon

by FreshBrains



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fantasizing, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, On the Run, POV Andrea, Pining, Pre-Season/Series 03, Protectiveness, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2387021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrea can finally identify the hard look in Michonne’s eyes—betrayal.  She sets her gaze into the same steel, looking Michonne head on.  She will <i>not</i> cry.  “She looked like someone I knew.”</p><p>Michonne opens her mouth to speak, then closes it.  She clenches her hands at her sides.  “We all knew people.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someday Soon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taste_of_Suburbia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy, Taste_of_Suburbia! Happy Femslashy Autumn! <3

One moment they’re scaling the edge of a ravine trying to keep away from the walkers’ sight across the clearing, and the next Andrea is on her back next to the creek with the world swirling in blues and greens above her. 

“ _Andrea_ ,” Michonne yelps, her voice one tight, shaking gasp.  A litter of pebbles and dust fall over Andrea’s face from underneath Michonne’s boots.

“You’re a mother,” Andrea says when Michonne finally skids down the slope. She looks up at her companion, her vision blurring, and all she can see is Michonne’s grim face and the dappled light filtering through the trees.

Michonne’s hands are gentle on Andrea limbs and torso, her touch firm without being clinical.  The pads of her fingers apply pressure to Andrea’s wrists, her ankles, the soft parts of her stomach.  “Does this hurt?” Michonne asks, voice unchanged and unresponsive to Andrea’s declaration.  She presses her thumb against Andrea’s collarbone and Andrea hisses.

“Smarts a little, but I’ll live,” Andrea says, easing up from the mossy creek-bed.  Her jeans are soaked through but it can’t hurt at that point; they needed a wash anyways.  “I just…” her cheeks burn.  _Why did I say that?  We don’t talk about Before._   “You’re a mother.  I can tell.”

Michonne smirks, still squatting over Andrea, her eyes raking down Andrea body.  “How?”  She holds out a hand.

Andrea accepts the offering and lets Michonne pull her up.  “The way you ran down that slope like a bat out of hell.  My mother used to do the same for…” She almost says Amy’s name, but she can’t, she won’t.  “She used to do the same when I got hurt.  Had that look in her eye, too.”

“Someone needs to keep you in line,” Michonne grumbles, but she keeps a hand on Andrea’s waist as they move up the crumbling slope of the ravine.  The walkers make their noises and shuffles across the clearing, but as far as they can tell, they’re not making their way to the ravine.  “And I _was_.”

Andrea rubs her neck.  She’ll be sore the next day.  “Was what?”

“I _was_ a mother,” Michonne says, and takes the lead, the sun glinting off her katana.  “Let’s make camp for a night.  You can rest.”

*

Andrea marks time in sunrises and sunsets—they don’t even feel like whole days anymore.  It’s all just See the Walkers time and Can’t See the Walkers time, day and night, like they’re living in two separate circles of Hell.  Once the sun goes down, they shift into survival mode without speaking.  Nothing else matters, just waiting it out in their huddle of ragged blankets and jackets, sharing one wool sleeping bag for warmth in their tent.

But Andrea can tell it’s finally winter when she wakes up one morning and sees one solitary swirl of snowflakes blow past their camp, a flurry of crystals that dissipate into the browning leaves at the edge of the clearing.  She smiles, her teeth still chattering from the morning cold, and pulls her flannel shirt tighter around her shoulders.

Michonne hands her a tin cup of coffee, the instant kind that tastes like therapist offices—they found an unopened box of it in the back storage shed of a service station half a mile back and ration it out sparingly.  It tastes so bad, so _normal_ , and Andrea almost cries at the first sip.

Michonne grins, hiding it in her cup, her cheeks plump with suppressed laughter.  She has her own flannel shirt buttoned to the top, blue to Andrea’s purple, and her dreadlocks are pulled back under a blaze-orange hunting beanie. 

“What?” Andrea says, settling down on her blanket in front of their small fire.  It’s only kindling, just enough to heat their hands and water—anything bigger might attract walkers or something worse.  Her shoulder and collarbone still ache under her clothes but the bruising is mild, so she’s not worried about broken bones.  Michonne already checked it before they even left the tent.

Michonne shrugs, pulling back the blanket over her lap so Andrea can sit close to her and share it.  “Almost like home,” she says drily, holding out her dented cup.

Andrea huffs out a laugh and clinks her cup against Michonne’s.  “Almost.”

*

It’s too quiet at night, too quiet and now too cold.  The wind whistles through the gaps in their tent and Andrea tenses at every large gust, afraid the walkers will pick up the sound and seek them out.  They’ve got a gate of woven sticks around camp that will crack like hell if a walker tries to cross, but it’s all for nothing if the damn wind won’t shut up.

Andrea rolls onto her back, staring up at the dirty canvas of the tent.  She tries to breathe deep and relax her sore muscles.  They always have long days ahead of them, no matter what—it isn’t like before the outbreak when she could brace herself for a difficult case or a Saturday spent cleaning out the garage.  Sleep meant survival.

But the keeps thinking about what Michonne said that morning, what felt like eons ago— _almost like home._ She can’t stop.  It’s like a dam has been broken and she needs to know everything about her companion, the important and the not-so-important, the good and the bad.  Where did she live?  Was she married?  What did she do for a living?  What TV shows did she watch, how did she like her eggs, where did she go to school?  Hell, what _perfume_ did she wear?

She can imagine Michonne slipping out of bed in the morning and slinging a purple silk robe on over a simple white pajama set, she can imagine her starting the coffee maker before pressing Andrea up against the kitchen edge of the kitchen table and kissing her awake.

 _How’d you sleep?_ Michonne twines her arms around Andrea’s neck, pressing their foreheads together.

 _Fine, despite you snoring like a chainsaw,_ Andrea says, pecking Michonne on the lips.

Andrea rolls over, pulling her blanket tighter beneath her chin.  She wants to cry, but she doesn’t do that anymore—and besides, Michonne would hear.

*

Andrea wakes minutes before the sun comes up to the brittle sound of sticks cracking in the cool morning air.

“Michonne,” she mumbles, still half-asleep, but Michonne is already unzipping the tent, katana slung over her shoulder.

“Stay here,” Michonne hisses, untangling her blanket from her legs.  She slides out of the tent like a snake through the grass. 

 _“Help me,”_ a female voice says, hoarse and dry.  _“Do you have anything to eat?”_

Andrea sits up, ready to offer the visitor food from her pack, but she hears Michonne ask, “Whose blood is that?”

Andrea feels a violent shiver run up her spine when she realizes Michonne’s katana is wrapped in oiled rags next to the sleeping bag and not in its sheath across her back.  She grabs her gun with its three bullets left with shaking fingers. 

“ _Please, it’s not bad,”_ the woman says, her voice a groan of pain.  _“It barely got me.”_

Andrea kneels at the mouth of the tent, peering through the unzipped slit.  Michonne stands in front of the tent, her back towards Andrea, guarding her, and the woman stands just at the edge of their clearing, still struggling with the woven gate of brush keeping her back.  Andrea can tell she’s on her way to turning—her skin is a sickly greyish-green, her eyes bloodshot, sweat gleaming on her forehead.  The side of her left hand bleeds onto her jeans.

Her hair is blond, blond like beach sand in the summer, blond like the delicate feathers of a newly-hatched chick.

“Stay back,” Michonne growls, voice low and daunting.  “You’ve been bit.  We can’t help you.”

Andrea takes a deep breath and unzips the tent the rest of the way, sliding out through the opening.  Her gun feels heavy; the metal slick from the sweat of her palm.  She knows what to the do with walkers at this point—aim and shoot.  But when they still have voices and words, it isn’t so easy.

The woman jerks, peering around to look at Andrea.  “Please.  I’m alone, I’m hungry.  It’s only a little bite.”

Michonne holds her arm out in front of Andrea, palm pressed against Andrea’s sleep-warm stomach.  “Stay back,” she whispers, this time to Andrea.  It sends a flare of irritation through Andrea; she took care of herself before Michonne and she still could.

The early, gentle winter sun flashes off the woman’s tangled blond hair, and Andrea thinks of mermaid necklaces and fishing boats, of forgotten phone calls.  She lifts her gun.

The woman lets out a groan and lurches forward, falling to the frosty grass on her hands and knees, the loose fence collapsing around her.  Michonne takes a staggering step back, her fingers on her empty katana sheath.  “Shoot,” she tells Andrea.  _“Now.”_

She’s seen so many of them—men and women who aren’t really men and women anymore, only skin and muscle and disease.  She’s shot out their brains and chests and necks, left them to rot in the streets and woods, but the gun shakes in her hands.

She has a brief, heated flash of that what-if life with Michonne again.

( _Are you two being disgusting again?_ Amy asks, bounding down the stairs with a little dark-haired boy on her hip.  _Ugh, you sicken me, the both of you.  Stop being cute._

Michonne laughs, holding her arms out for her son.  _We couldn’t if we tried, little sister._ She gives Andrea a small, secret grin, the kind she saves only for her.)

The woman crawls forward, the tips of her bloodied fingers grazing Michonne’s stocking feet, and Andrea finally takes a sharp breath and pulls the trigger.  The sound echoes throughout the clearing, just a muffled crack due to the makeshift silencer made out of an aluminum rod and some steel wool, and then there’s silence, the cold silence of being alone once more.

Michonne’s breathing slows and she pulls her hand back from Andrea like she’s been burned.  She whips around, her hair swirling around her neck.  “What the _hell_ was that?”

Andrea stands her ground, an eye still on the dead woman on the ground.  She doesn’t bleed much; her blood was already thickening.  Michonne’s socks are clean.  “I put her down, didn’t I?”

Michonne clenches her teeth, her jaw ticking.  “You took your sweet time, Andrea.  I wasn’t armed, why did you hesitate?”

Andrea narrows her eyes at Michonne.  “Like I said, I _shot_ her.  She’s dead.  Can we just leave it be?”  She makes a move towards the body, ready to drag it into the woods and dump it into the nearby ravine, but Michonne steps into her path.

“No.  We’re supposed to have each other’s backs.  _Always._ ” 

Andrea can finally identify the hard look in Michonne’s eyes—betrayal.  She sets her gaze into the same steel, looking Michonne head on.  She will _not_ cry.  “She looked like someone I knew.”

Michonne opens her mouth to speak, then closes it.  She clenches her hands at her sides.  “We all knew people.”

Andrea nods, wrapping her arms around her body.  It’s suddenly colder, the air crisper around them.  “You used to be a mother.  I used to be a sister.”  She wants to say something else, wants to tell Michonne about Amy’s smile and silly jokes and favorite songs, but instead, she ducks down and crawls back into the tent.  She instantly feels foolish—they need to pack up, get the leaves and roots they found bound up and into their packs, get fresh water from the stream.  Andrea knows she can’t burrow back into her blankets. 

But before she can make a move, the tent opens and Michonne slides in, plants her hands gently on Andrea’s shoulders, and kisses her.  She tastes like sleep and earth, her lips a little dry, and all Andrea’s body knows how to do is arch into the warm, her lips moving beneath Michonne’s.  Michonne’s hand wanders to Andrea’s hair, smoothing the sleep-tangled strands.  “Your sister,” she says softly against Andrea’s lips, “did she look like you?”

Andrea closes her eyes and slides her arms around Michonne’s waist.  “Yeah,” she says, and feels the sting of tears.  “I’m not used to seeing people anymore.”  She opens her eyes and Michonne is looking at her, eyes hooded and soft, understanding in a way that Andrea feels deep in her chest.

Michonne cups Andrea’s face and brings her closer again.  “I bet she was beautiful,” she says, wiping away Andrea’s tears with her thumbs.

Andrea slumps into Michonne’s touch.  “She was.”

Michonne nods and pulls Andrea in for another kiss.  “We’re a team.  We need to keep each other safe.  I don’t know what…” she halts, pressing her lips together, but Andrea doesn’t make her say it. 

_I don’t know what I’d do without you._

Andrea tightens her arms around Michonne.  “I’m glad you found me out there,” she whispers against Michonne’s neck, her cheeks burning from the sentiment.

Michonne smiles.  “Let’s start packing up.  I want to get a mile down the river before we try to hunt again.”

Andrea smiles and grabs her pack.  By the time the tent is taken down and their campsite is returned to its original state, Andrea feels ready to go into the cold early-winter day.

She knows someday, they’ll talk about everything—their lives Before, their families, their careers, and everything else that made them who they were.  But for now, Andrea just walks, her boots crunching in the dead leaves, Michonne at her side.


End file.
